85. Sūrat al-Burūj

Twenty-two verses. On its being Meccan there is something close to unanimity; it is counted among the sūras of the early period.

It takes its name from the word in the first verse: ٱلْبُرُوج.

This sūra asks one of the hardest questions in the Qurʾān and does not shrink from answering it: what if the one who is wronged is not delivered?

In most of the Qurʾān's narratives there is a deliverance. Noah (Nūḥ) boards the ship, Moses (Mūsā) crosses the sea, Abraham (Ibrāhīm) comes out of the fire, Mecca is kept safe from the army of the elephant. In Sūrat al-Burūj there is nothing of the kind. The believers are thrown into the trenches and they burn. The sūra does not say that they were saved. Neither does it say that the wrongdoers were punished in this world.

It does something else instead: it moves the verdict elsewhere. The deliverance is not on the stage but outside it — in the garden (verse 11) and in the punishment (verse 10). And the sūra does not conceal this move; on the contrary, it announces it by its own structure.

The sūra opens like a piece of history and ends with a matter of text. Facing the people who were burned there stands, at the close, a preserved tablet. This contrast is the spine of the sūra, and it comes into the open in the last two verses.

The basmala was treated in earlier sections and is not taken up again here; the verse numbers are counted without the basmala.

In this sūra — exactly as in Sūrat al-Fīl — the line between what the Qurʾān says and what the reports and the historical sources relate has to be drawn first. In the section on Sūrat al-Fīl the general picture of sixth-century Yemen (the kingdom of Ḥimyar, the Abyssinian/Aksumite occupation, the Byzantine–Sasanian rivalry, Abraha) was given; I do not repeat it here. This section looks at what stands before that frame: at the event given as the cause of the Abyssinian occupation.

The whole of what the Qurʾān gives about this event is this:

• There was a community called "the companions of the trench".
• There was a trench, and in it a fire with fuel in plenty.
• This community sat at the edge of that fire.
• They were witnesses to what they were doing to the believers — that is, they were watching.
• The one and only reason they took vengeance on the believers was that they believed in God.
• Unless they repent, the punishment of Hell and the punishment of the burning are theirs.

What the Qurʾān does not say: the place of the event is not mentioned. The year is not mentioned. The name of the ruler is not mentioned. Which religious community the believers belonged to is not said. Their number is not given. Whether the wrongdoers met any punishment in this world is not said. What came before the event and what came after are not told.

The Qurʾān does not name the event.

In the classical commentaries more than one candidate has been proposed for this event. Knowing them is necessary in order to judge how certain the equation "the companions of the trench = Najrān" really is:

The majority have preferred the first view. But this has to be said plainly: this is an inference, not the Qurʾān's own declaration. The link between the Qurʾān and Najrān was made by the classical exegetes; the text does not make it.

The report in Muslim has a particular place in this table. The report is long, and tells the story of a king, a sorcerer, a monk and a boy; at the end the king has the people who follow the belief the boy brought thrown into trenches. The report gives neither the place nor the time of the event. For that reason the report supplies the expression "the companions of the trench" with a content, but it does not supply a date.

Let us now step outside the Qurʾān and the material of the reports. Nothing related in this part comes from the Qurʾān; all of it comes from historical sources and inscriptions.

The event itself stands on solid historical ground. In the first quarter of the sixth century, in the kingdom of Ḥimyar in South Arabia, a ruler who had adopted Judaism came to power. In the Islamic sources this ruler is called Dhū Nuwās. In contemporary inscriptions found in South Arabia a king of Ḥimyar named Yūsuf Asʾar Yathʾar is recorded, and most researchers identify these two names with the same person.

That this ruler mounted a bloody operation against the Christian community living in the city of Najrān to the north is recorded both in the inscriptions and in the external sources.

The kinds of source and what they record:

All these sources are partisan, and the note has to be entered: the inscriptions belong to the king who tells of his victory, and the Syriac and Greek texts to the side of those who were killed. But that records coming from different sides converge on the event having taken place makes the event itself solid historically.

The question of the date. For the year of the event different dates are proposed in the sources and in modern research; there is a concentration on the first half of the 520s. I do not give a definite year, because the sources and the researchers differ on this point.

What came after. As was recorded in the section on Sūrat al-Fīl, after this event — with Byzantine support — the Abyssinian (Aksumite) king crossed the Red Sea and took Yemen, and the kingdom of Ḥimyar came to an end. That is, the massacre at Najrān is recorded as the ground and the turning point of Yemen's passing under Abyssinian administration. Abraha's becoming governor of Yemen, and hence the affair of the elephant, is the next link in that chain.

The historical picture that comes out of this is the following: Sūrat al-Fīl and Sūrat al-Burūj may be looking at two successive events in the same region — al-Burūj at the earlier, al-Fīl at the later. And for the Meccans both were events they had heard of. The caravan routes went down to Yemen; Najrān lay on that road.

Care is needed here.

The inscriptions and the external sources record the killing, the burning of churches and the mass executions. But the detail of "a trench being dug and a fire lit in it" is essentially a form of description found in the Syriac martyr narratives and in the Islamic sources. I cannot say that the inscriptions give this detail in this form.

So the following have to be kept apart:

• That a massacre took place at Najrān: historically solid.
• That the massacre was carried out with fire in a trench: it occurs in the narrative sources; it is not confirmed to the same degree at the level of the inscriptions.
• That "the companions of the trench" in the Qurʾān is this event: it is an inference of the classical exegetes, not the Qurʾān's declaration.

Not confusing these three layers with one another is a rule of method in this commentary.

One more thing has to be recorded: the sūra is not giving a history lesson.

If the aim of the sūra had been to document the event, it would have given the names. It does not. What it gives is a structure: a power, a fire, seated spectators, and people whose only crime is faith.

The withholding of the names turns the narrative from an event into a pattern. And for the first addressees of the Qurʾān this was its function: the first community, being tortured in Mecca, was learning that the same thing had happened to others before them.

Wa'l-samāʾi dhāti'l-burūj "By the sky, holder of the constellations."

The sūra opens with an oath. This is a common opening in the short Meccan sūras of the Qurʾān; it was treated in this commentary in the sections on al-Shams, al-Layl, al-Ḍuḥā and al-ʿĀdiyāt.

The function of the oath is particularly striking here: the things sworn by have to do with the answer of the oath. The sūra swears by the sky, by a day and by witnesses, and will then relate a scene of wrongdoing. That is, the notion of witnessing is built already inside the oath.

Dhāt is a word of annexation meaning "the one that possesses"; it is in the feminine form, because samāʾ counts as feminine in Arabic.

This word will occur twice in the sūra:

• ٱلسَّمَآءِ ذَاتِ ٱلْبُرُوجِ (1) — the sky, holder of the constellations.
• ٱلنَّارِ ذَاتِ ٱلْوَقُودِ (5) — the fire, holder of the fuel.

Two annexations on the same pattern. In the one, the sky and its constellations; in the other, the pit and its fire. An order established above, a fire lit below. By giving these two annexations in the same form, the sūra sets up the comparison.

I record this as my own reading; the shared pattern, however, is a datum of the text.

Root: ب-ر-ج. The original sense of the root is to appear, to come out into the open, to be conspicuous. The derivatives of the root spread out from this centre:

• بُرْج (burj) — the tower of a fortress, a watchtower. It takes this name because it rises and is seen. Its plural is بُرُوج.
• تَبَرُّج (tabarruj) — a woman's displaying her adornment and her beauty, bringing it out into the open. The Qurʾān: "Do not flaunt your finery as in the first age of ignorance" (al-Aḥzāb 33/33); "without displaying their adornment…" (al-Nūr 24/60).
• بَارِج / بَرَّاج — open, plain, conspicuous.

The same root names both the tower of a fortress and the display of adornment. The shared core is "not being hidden, coming out into the open". The tower of a fortress is seen from far off across the plain; tabarruj is the making visible of what was covered.

I record this unity of root; I issue no moral ruling between the two usages, because the root itself carries no ruling.

The classical exegetes differ:

Help from within the Qurʾān. The word occurs in four places in the Qurʾān, and in three of them the context helps:

"We have surely set constellations in the sky and made them beautiful for those who look." (al-Ḥijr 15/16)

"Blessed is He who set constellations in the sky and placed in it a lamp and an illuminating moon." (al-Furqān 25/61)

"Wherever you may be, death will reach you, even if you are inside solid towers (burūjin mushayyada)." (al-Nisāʾ 4/78)

In al-Nisāʾ 4/78 the word is beyond dispute in the sense of tower — and note: what is related there is the towers' failure to protect.

In al-Ḥijr and al-Furqān it comes together with the sky and is bound to the idea of adornment / order.

My assessment — it is not binding: both senses are alive in the text, and in the verse they do not exclude one another. Burūj carries both the regular regions seen in the sky and the idea of "a high and solid structure". Both these sides of the word set up a meaningful relation with what follows in the sūra.

What the sūra is going to relate is a pit in the ground: a trench dug out, low and narrow. And the sūra begins its work from the sky: a high, ordered, visible structure.

Let us set the two images side by side:

The first four verses of the sūra bring the eye down from the sky to the earth. And this descent will be reversed in the last two verses of the sūra: facing the fire on the earth there will be set a preserved tablet.

And there is this too — if we take the "fortress" sense of the word seriously: al-Nisāʾ 4/78 said that towers do not protect against death. The sūra begins by swearing not by the fortresses people build but by the holder of the towers of the sky. I record this as my own reading.

Wa'l-yawmi'l-mawʿūd "By the promised day."

Root: و-ع-د. To give one's word, to announce that something will happen. The Qurʾān uses this root for both good and bad tidings; for bad tidings there is in addition the form إِيعَاد / وَعِيد (waʿīd — threat).

مَوْعُود is a passive participle: "that which has been promised". The day, that is, is described as being itself a matter of a given word.

The choice of this word is meaningful. The verse does not say "the day of resurrection" or "the day of reckoning". It says "the day of which the word was given" — that is, what defines the day is not what will happen in it but the word given about it.

The majority of the exegetes explain this as the day of resurrection, and the context supports it: the sūra is a sūra of reckoning.

The whole tension of the sūra is this: the wrongdoers were not punished in this world, the wronged were not delivered in this world. Where, then, is the verdict?

The second verse is the name of that "where". Already in its first oaths the sūra says on what ground the reckoning will be held.

And one thing more: the word mawʿūd points to a word given. The last two verses of the sūra will also point to a word (to the Qurʾān). The sūra, that is, opens with a word and closes with a word.

Wa shāhidin wa mashhūd "And by a witness and by what is witnessed."

The most disputed verse of the sūra, and the reason for the dispute is plain: both words come indefinite (with tanwīn). Neither who the witness is nor what the witnessed thing is gets said.

Root: ش-ه-د. This root is the key root of the sūra, and it occurs in three verses in three different forms. Let us establish the root first, and then read the three occurrences together.

At the centre of the root stands this: to be present at the outset of an event, to be there. Bearing witness is first a matter of place; its being a matter of knowledge comes second.

Derivatives:

• شَاهِد (shāhid) — one present; a witness. An active participle.
• مَشْهُود (mashhūd) — that at which one is present, that which is witnessed. A passive participle.
• شَهِيد (shahīd) — the intensive form: one whose witnessing is complete. In the Qurʾān it is used both for "God, who sees all things" and for "one killed for the sake of the religion".
• شُهُود (shuhūd) — the plural of shāhid: witnesses.
• مَشْهَد — the place of witnessing, the scene.
• شَهَادَة — testimony; and the shahāda, the formula of witness.

The bond between bearing witness and being present is there in English too: when one says "I witnessed the event", what is meant is that I was there.

This will be critical for understanding the sixth and seventh verses of the sūra. For there the wrongdoers will be called witnesses — and what they do is exactly "to be present".

A great many views have been transmitted in the classical commentaries. I put them into a table together with their grounds; I do not impose a preference.

An observation. The two strongest grounds in this table are the ones that come from within the Qurʾān: Hūd 11/103 (mashhūd = the Day of Resurrection) and the sūra's own seventh verse (shuhūd = the wrongdoers).

And this is striking: three verses later the sūra brings its own "witnesses" onto the stage. What the oath left indefinite gets filled in inside the narrative — but in a chilling way: the first concrete witnesses of the sūra are the wrongdoers seated at the edge of the fire.

I record this as my own reading. But the sequence is in the text: verse 3 says shāhid, verse 7 says shuhūd, verse 9 says shahīd.

Three oaths were sworn, and after them comes قُتِلَ أَصْحَٰبُ ٱلْأُخْدُودِ. Is this the answer of the oath?

The grammarians differ:

The third view has a strong grammatical ground: the sentence إِنَّ بَطْشَ رَبِّكَ لَشَدِيدٌ is the typical form of the answer to an oath in Arabic (inna + lām). On this reading the sūra is saying: "By the sky, by that day and by the witnesses, the seizing of your Lord is severe" — and the narrative told in between is the ground of that seizing.

I find this reading strong but do not count it binding; the second view is also widespread and is not contrary to the text.

Qutila aṣḥābu'l-ukhdūd "Slain be the companions of the trench!"

The verb is to all appearance a passive perfect: "he was killed". But in Arabic the form قُتِلَ is an established expression of imprecation: "perish", "damn him".

The Qurʾān uses this form in several places:

• "Slain be man, how ungrateful he is!" (ʿAbasa 80/17)
• "Slain be the conjecturers!" (al-Dhāriyāt 51/10)
• "Slain be he, how he measured it out!" (al-Muddaththir 74/19)

The explanation of the lexicographers: to say "let him be killed" of something is the harshest form of imprecation in Arabic, because being killed is the last thing that comes; to wish it on a person is to leave nothing else to be wished on him.

And here is the sharpest move of language in the sūra.

This community is the community that kills people. They lit the fire, they dug the trenches. When the Qurʾān issues its verdict about them, the word it uses is the very act they performed: qutila — "let them be killed".

The verdict, that is, is given in the language of the crime. This is a method the Qurʾān uses often, and it will be seen again in this commentary in the later verses of al-Burūj: the tenth verse will say ʿadhāb al-ḥarīq (the punishment of the burning) — because they burned.

Root: ص-ح-ب. This word was treated in the section on Sūrat al-Fīl. The finding there was this: the root means "to accompany something, not to part from it"; ṣāḥib is a companion on the road; ṣuḥba is being together. And when the Qurʾān names communities with this form, it ties the naming to the one thing that defines that community.

In al-Fīl this finding was put to work as follows: an army is mentioned not by its imperial connection but by an animal; what they trusted in became their name.

Here the same method yields a still harsher result. This community may have founded a state, marched an army, adopted a religion. In the Qurʾān's record their name is a pit.

And note: the root of the word ṣāḥib is "not to part from". Those, that is, who did not leave the trench. The sixth verse will say exactly this: "they were sitting at the edge of it."

Root: خ-د-د. At the centre of the root there is a lengthwise hollow, a cleft:

• خَدّ (khadd) — the cheek. The flat and slightly hollowed side of the face. The Qurʾān: "Do not turn your cheek away from people" (Luqmān 31/18) — it describes turning the face away in arrogance.
• خُدَّة / أُخْدُود — a long pit opened in the ground, a trench, a channel.
• تَخْدِيد — to cleave and open a channel.

The word is on the وزن أُفْعُول pattern (ufʿūl), and this pattern in Arabic conveys magnification. Not an ordinary pit, then, but a large and long trench.

The word occurs only here in the Qurʾān.

The relation between these two usages of the root is striking as a detail inside the language itself.

Khadd is the softest and most open place on a human face; the place that is caressed, that is kissed, down which tears run. And the same root names the pit into which people were thrown to be burned.

The shared core is formal: both are a lengthwise, slightly hollowed surface. But the standing of the two usages side by side gives the word a strange weight.

I record this as an observation about the language; I do not claim that the verse intends this resonance.

There is a small but noteworthy dispute: does the expression aṣḥāb al-ukhdūd describe the wrongdoers, or the believers thrown into the trench?

The majority hold the first view, and the flow of verses 6-7 supports it: the subject of the sentence "they were sitting at the edge of it" can only be the wrongdoers.

The second view has a side to it as well, however: the word ṣāḥib is used in Arabic also for "the person who comes to be in a thing" (aṣḥāb al-nār — those who enter the fire). For that reason the expression is broad enough to take in everyone connected with the pit.

I prefer the first view; my ground is the settled standing of the qutila form as an imprecation. It is not binding.

Al-nāri dhāti'l-waqūd "That fire abounding in fuel."

This verse is the appositive substitute (the explanatory term) for the word ukhdūd in the preceding verse. That is: "the trench — that is, that fiery trench".

What the word order does is this: the fourth verse said the pit, the fifth said what was inside it. The camera first shows the hollow, then looks into it.

Root: و-ق-د. To catch fire, to burn. Waqada'l-nāru — the fire caught. Īqād — kindling. Mawqid — the hearth.

وَقُود (waqūd, in the reading with fatḥa) — fuel, that is, the matter that feeds the fire. The Qurʾān uses this word in a striking place:

"…guard yourselves against the fire whose fuel is people and stones." (al-Baqara 2/24) "…protect them from a fire whose fuel is people and stones." (al-Taḥrīm 66/6)

In both verses the fuel is a human being.

A note on variant readings: the reading وُقُود (wuqūd, with ḍamma) is also transmitted in the sources, and then the sense becomes "the burning itself". I give no firm ascription as to which imām of the readings held this reading. In point of meaning the difference is small.

Dhāti'l-waqūd — "holder of the fuel". The verse does not say "a great fire" or "a fierce fire"; it qualifies the fire by what feeds it.

This gives a piece of information about the scene: the fire is not burning of itself. Someone is feeding it. Fuel is carried, thrown on, the fire is kept going.

What is being related, then, is not a momentary outburst of rage; it is a sustained operation. The next verse will complete this: they were sitting. Sitting is the sign of a work that has gone on a long time.

And when the usage in al-Baqara 2/24 and al-Taḥrīm 66/6 is called to mind, a correspondence arises: in this world they lit a fire whose fuel was human beings; in the hereafter there is a fire whose fuel is human beings. The sūra does not say this; the word says it.

Idh hum ʿalayhā quʿūd · Wa hum ʿalā mā yafʿalūna bi'l-muʾminīna shuhūd "When they were sitting at the edge of it. And they were witnesses to what they were doing to the believers."

The two heaviest verses of the sūra. And their weight lies not in the torture they relate — but in their not relating the torture.

Notice: the sūra does not describe the torture itself at all.

Not how many there were, not how they were thrown in, not how long it lasted, not the screams. None of it. The Qurʾān is not setting up a scene of horror here.

The only thing it relates is the posture of the wrongdoers: they were sitting and they were looking.

This is a choice, and it shows where the sūra is looking. The subject is not what the fire did; it is what those who watched the fire became.

Idh is an adverb of past time, and in Arabic it is used to bring a scene before the eye. It occurs very often in the narratives of the Qurʾān: idh qāla, idh yarfaʿu, idh humā fi'l-ghār.

English has no single particle for it; "remember when…" comes nearest: it opens a scene in the hearer's mind.

Root: ق-ع-د. To sit. Its derivatives:

• قَاعِد — one sitting. Its plural is قُعُود.
• مَقْعَد — the place where one sits, a seat, a station. The Qurʾān uses it of the garden: "…in a seat of truth (maqʿadi ṣidqin)" (al-Qamar 54/55).
• قَاعِدَة — a foundation, a basis; that which has been set down. Turkish has borrowed this word as kaide, "rule, principle".
• قَوَاعِد — foundations. "Abraham and Ishmael (Ismāʿīl) were raising the foundations of the House" (al-Baqara 2/127).

The Qurʾān uses this root also for those who stay back from fighting: "…be with those who sit (al-qāʿidīn)" (al-Tawba 9/46, 83); "Those who sit among the believers … are not equal" (al-Nisāʾ 4/95).

In the root, that is, there is the idea of not moving and of staying in one place.

The grammatical point here is important. The verse does not build a verbal sentence: it does not say qaʿadū (they sat). It builds a nominal sentence: hum … quʿūd — "they are sitters / they are in a state of being seated."

In Arabic a nominal sentence conveys continuity and fixity; a verbal sentence conveys occurrence and renewal. This distinction is a measure often used in the exegesis of the Qurʾān.

The verse, that is, is not relating an act of sitting; it is relating a state of sitting. Not: they sat; but: they were those who sit.

And the seventh verse repeats the same structure: hum … shuhūd — again a nominal sentence.

Two nominal sentences one after the other. The sūra builds the wrongdoers' immobility with grammar.

The particle ʿalā conveys being above and in a commanding position. As was recorded in the section on Sūrat al-Fīl in this commentary, the particle draws the direction of the event.

The direction it draws here is this: the trench below, they above. The position of a grandstand.

Some explain this as "they sat at the edge of the fire", others say "seats had been set up around the pit". The detail is not in the Qurʾān; but the particle establishes the difference in level between the watched and the watching.

And here is the root's second turn. In the third verse there was shāhid; here shuhūd — the plural of the same word.

This link is the most important internal connection in the sūra.

In the third verse the sūra swore "by a witness and by what is witnessed". By whom the oath was sworn was left indefinite. And four verses later, the first concrete witnesses the sūra shows are people watching a human being burn.

Within one sūra, then, four verses apart, the word passes from its highest sense (a witness sworn by) to its lowest (a spectator).

And in the ninth verse it will turn a third time: وَٱللَّهُ عَلَىٰ كُلِّ شَىْءٍ شَهِيدٌ — "and God is witness over all things."

Let us put the three occurrences into a table:

What the sūra builds is plain: the watchers are being watched. The wrongdoers were the audience of a scene; but the scene itself stood before another witness.

I offer this reading as my own inference; but the root's turning three times in three verses is a datum of the text and can be counted.

Something has to be said at this point, because these two verses of the sūra establish a moral category.

Who lit the fire? The verse does not say. Who dug the trench? It does not say. Who threw the people in? It does not say.

The only acts the verse records are "sitting" and "looking".

And these two acts are, as a matter of language, passive verbs — they harm no one, they move nothing. Even so, the sūra fastens the verdict on them.

The reason for this is visible in the structure of the seventh verse: عَلَىٰ مَا يَفْعَلُونَ بِٱلْمُؤْمِنِينَ — "to what they were doing to the believers". The verb is yafʿalūn — "they are doing". Those sitting and those doing, that is, are in the same pronoun.

The verse does not separate watching from doing. The spectator and the agent are inside the same "they".

There is a further reason for this, and it is visible when one looks at the language: the word shuhūd means not "spectator" but "witness". And a witness is the legal ratifier of an event. To watch an event, in this Arabic word, comes to mean to bear witness to it — that is, to enter it into the record and to accept it.

The sūra does not recognise spectatorship as a neutral position.

The verse names the people who were burned مُؤْمِنِين.

This choice of word is noteworthy. The Qurʾān does not say here which community they belonged to, which book they followed, how they worshipped. It mentions them by a single attribute: that they had believed.

And the next verse will say what it was they believed in as well: "that they believed in God — the Mighty, the Praiseworthy."

This is one of the widest doors in the sūra. As was recorded in the section on Sūrat al-Bayyina, the Qurʾān's tying its verdict to the attribute and not to the identity is its own method. So it is here: the sūra is not lamenting a congregation, it is lamenting a situation.

Wa mā naqamū minhum illā an yuʾminū bi'llāhi'l-ʿAzīzi'l-Ḥamīd "They took vengeance on them only because they believed in God, the Mighty, the Praiseworthy."

The central sentence of the sūra. And one of the most shattering sentences in the Qurʾān, because it finishes off the ground of a whole tyranny in a single sentence.

Root: ن-ق-م. The sense of the root is finer than the English "to take revenge", and it has two stages:

1. To find a thing ugly and unacceptable, to count it a fault, not to countenance it. 2. To set about punishing it for that reason.

Naqm, that is, is first an assessment and then an act. A person first counts a thing a fault, then punishes it.

Its derivatives:

• نِقْمَة (niqma) — punishment, requital. It is used as the opposite of niʿma (favour).
• اِنْتِقَام (intiqām) — the taking of requital for something counted a fault.
• مُنْتَقِم — used in the Qurʾān of God: "We are the takers of requital from the guilty" (al-Sajda 32/22).

What the word does in the verse: it names the wrongdoers' behaviour as a judgement. They did not merely grow angry; they determined a thing to be a fault and punished that fault.

And the fault they determined is given in the rest of the verse.

In Arabic the structure مَا … إِلَّا (negation + exception) is a pattern of restriction (ḥaṣr), rendered in English by "only … because". Its function is to lock the verdict onto a single thing.

And the use of it here is startling, because the pattern of restriction is normally used for a defence or for a belittling: "only this much", "nothing else".

By using this pattern the verse does something appalling: it opens the ground of an entire massacre with the word "only".

In English this tone has to be kept: "The only reason they took vengeance on them … was that they believed."

The weight of the sentence lies not in the greatness of the ground but in its smallness. The sūra builds the disproportion with grammar.

This pattern occurs several more times in the Qurʾān, in almost the same words. Setting three of them side by side shows what the pattern does:

وَمَا تَنقِمُ مِنَّآ إِلَّآ أَنْ ءَامَنَّا بِـَٔايَٰتِ رَبِّنَا "You take vengeance on us only because we believed in the signs of our Lord." (al-Aʿrāf 7/126)

Who says this sentence? Pharaoh's sorcerers — when Pharaoh threatened to kill them for having seen the proof of Moses and believed.

قُلْ يَٰٓأَهْلَ ٱلْكِتَٰبِ هَلْ تَنقِمُونَ مِنَّآ إِلَّآ أَنْ ءَامَنَّا بِٱللَّهِ "Say: O People of the Book! Do you resent us only because we have believed in God…?" (al-Māʾida 5/59)

وَمَا نَقَمُوٓا۟ إِلَّآ أَنْ أَغْنَىٰهُمُ ٱللَّهُ وَرَسُولُهُۥ مِن فَضْلِهِۦ "They counted it a fault only that God and His Messenger had enriched them out of His bounty." (al-Tawba 9/74)

Three verses, the same pattern, the same root. And in all three what is related is the same: a community punishes another community for doing a good thing.

The connection with al-Aʿrāf 7/126 is particularly important, because Sūrat al-Burūj itself will mention Pharaoh in its eighteenth verse. The sūra, that is, uses the sentence of Pharaoh's sorcerers in its eighth verse and names Pharaoh in its eighteenth. There is a silent bond between the two verses.

I record this as my own reading; but the shared pattern and root are a datum of the text.

A small but meaningful grammatical detail: the verb is not perfect but imperfect. Not an āmanū (that they had believed), but an yuʾminū (that they believe, that they go on believing).

The imperfect conveys continuity. The crime, that is, is not a decision left in the past; it is an ongoing state. What disturbed the wrongdoers was not a decision taken at some time, but that those people still were so.

And now the finest side of the verse. The one believed in is mentioned by two names. The choice of these names is not accidental.

ٱلْعَزِيز — Root: ع-ز-ز. The concrete sense of the root is to be firm, hard, not to be taken hold of. Arḍ ʿazāz — hard ground that cannot be dug. From here:

• عِزَّة (ʿizza) — invincibility, superiority, not being seizable.
• عَزِيز — the one who cannot be defeated, who cannot be overcome; also "precious, rarely found" (what is rare cannot be got hold of).
• أَعَزَّ — he strengthened, he made superior.

Now look at the context. The people related in this verse are in a state of being precisely defeated. They have been thrown into the fire; they have been able to do nothing.

And the name of the One they believed in is "the one who cannot be defeated".

The sūra utters this name in the very scene of defeat. What this does is the following: the visible outcome and the measure of the truth are not the same thing. Those seated at the edge of the fire were strong at that moment; but ʿizza was not with them.

ٱلْحَمِيد — Root: ح-م-د. Praise. This root was treated in detail in the section on al-Fātiḥa; the finding there — the difference between ḥamd and commendation (madḥ), and ḥamd's requiring will and goodness — I do not repeat here.

حَمِيد, being on the faʿīl pattern, can carry both an active sense (one who praises much) and a passive one (one much praised); here the sense "the one who deserves praise" is the primary one.

That the two names come together is a pattern in the Qurʾān (Ibrāhīm 14/1; Sabaʾ 34/6, for instance). And its function here is this:

• al-ʿAzīz — the dimension of power: undefeatable.
• al-Ḥamīd — the dimension of character: deserving of praise.

Their being uttered together announces that power on its own is not enough. The power at the edge of the fire also possessed a kind of ʿizza — it was not defeated, no one could stand against it. But it did not deserve ḥamd.

The verse, that is, sets up a measure with the two names together: invincibility is meaningful only when it deserves praise.

I record this as my own reading; the coming together of the two names, however, is a datum of the text.

Alladhī lahū mulku'l-samāwāti wa'l-arḍ; wa'llāhu ʿalā kulli shayʾin shahīd "He to whom belongs the dominion of the heavens and the earth. And God is witness over all things."

This verse comes as an attribute of the word ٱللَّهِ in the preceding verse. That is, it is a single sentence with the eighth verse: "…that they believed in God, the Mighty, the Praiseworthy, to whom belongs the dominion of the heavens and the earth."

The One believed in is thus described by three things: undefeatable, deserving of praise, owner of everything.

Root: م-ل-ك. To own, to hold in hand, to be able to dispose of. Malik — a sovereign; mālik — an owner; mamlaka — a place over which rule is exercised; malakūt — the unseen side of dominion.

That the verse utters this name here is meaningful. Those seated at the edge of the fire were the sovereigns of a piece of ground. They had a mulk in their hands — they could have the trench dug, they could have people thrown in.

The verse sets the great dominion above that one: that of the heavens and the earth.

This is a move that establishes scale, and it is a method the Qurʾān uses often. The same structure was present in the section on Sūrat al-Fīl: an army, imperial backing, a war animal — and facing them, birds. Here too there is a sovereignty — and facing it, the dominion of the heavens and the earth.

The sūra brings the root of witnessing for the third time, and this time in its highest form: شَهِيد.

The difference of form is important. The faʿīl pattern conveys intensity in Arabic: not merely "one who is a witness", but one whose witnessing is without gap. Between the shuhūd of the seventh verse (plural, ordinary witnesses) and the shahīd here there is a difference of degree.

And the word order supports this too: the expression عَلَىٰ كُلِّ شَىْءٍ comes before shahīd. In Arabic the fronting of an element (taqdīm) conveys specification and emphasis. That is: "witness over all things — without exception."

Now compare the sixth verse. There too there was an ʿalā: عَلَيْهَا قُعُودٌ — "they were sitting over it".

The same particle, the same root, two scales. The wrongdoers were witnesses to a pit; God to all things.

This part of the sūra turns spectatorship itself inside out. Those who watched the scene were inside the scene that was being watched.

I offer this reading as my own inference; the sharing of the particles and of the root, however, is a datum of the text.

Inna'lladhīna fatanu'l-muʾminīna wa'l-muʾmināti thumma lam yatūbū fa-lahum ʿadhābu jahannama wa lahum ʿadhābu'l-ḥarīq "For those who tormented the believing men and the believing women and then did not repent, there is the punishment of Hell and there is the punishment of the burning."

The densest verse of the sūra, and inside it stands one of the most unexpected sentences in the Qurʾān.

Root: ف-ت-ن. And the concrete sense of this root scarcely overlaps at all with the usual English renderings of the word.

The original sense of the root is this: to put gold into the fire and melt it, and so to separate out the alloy within it and bring its purity to light.

It is the goldsmith's work. Raw gold carries other metals within it. When it is put into the fire the alloy is separated out and what is pure remains. In Arabic this operation is called fatn; the one who performs it is called fattān.

At the centre of the root, then, there are three elements at once:

1. Fire — the instrument of the operation. 2. Testing — bringing to light what is pure. 3. Separation — dividing what is mixed into its components.

These three elements explain every use of the word in the Qurʾān.

The word ranges over a very wide field in the Qurʾān. Seeing the range is necessary in order to place the sense in this verse:

The usual English renderings of fitna hold only one end of this range — "sedition", "stirring up trouble". The field the Qurʾān uses is far wider, and its centre is testing.

Let us come back to the verse now. What does the verb fatanū mean here?

The exegetes give two readings, and both are two faces of the same root:

The two readings do not conflict; they are two faces of the same event. Burning is the instrument of the pressure.

And here is the real point: in Arabic the sense "torture" is derived from the sense of testing gold in fire. The language itself, that is, names torture as a testing.

This is a chilling and striking fact of language. The torturer supposes himself a tester — he thinks he is forcing a person and drawing out his "true" stance. The word carries that claim.

But the word says something else at the same time: the gold put into the fire is not destroyed. The fire does not destroy the gold; it destroys the alloy. This is an image that stands at the root of the word, and it becomes meaningful when joined with the eleventh verse of the sūra: for those who were burned there is the garden.

I record this connection as my own reading. The concrete sense of the root (the testing of gold in fire) is given in the classical dictionaries; the interpretation I have drawn from it is mine.

The verse counts two groups separately: believing men and believing women.

In Arabic the masculine plural (muʾminīn) can already take in women as well. Their being counted in addition is an emphasis called in the language taṣrīḥ (explicit statement).

Its function here may be this — and I say it as my own reading: the sūra wants the victims to be counted. Not a collective "they", but two groups. This is a detail set against the crowded and nameless "they" (the wrongdoers) of the sixth verse. The wrongdoers are mentioned as a single mass; the victims by being separated out.

The Qurʾān makes this double count in other places as well (al-Aḥzāb 33/35 is the fullest example).

The four most unexpected words of the sūra.

The verse is relating a community that burns human beings. And in issuing the verdict of punishment it inserts a condition: if they did not repent.

That is: the door of repentance is left open even to those who burn human beings.

To feel the strangeness of this sentence, look not at what is said but at what is not said. The verse could have said the following, and all of them would have suited the context:

• "For them there is the punishment of Hell." (Unconditional)
• "Their repentance will not be accepted." (The door shut)
• "They are cursed for ever." (A settled verdict)

It says none of these. It says: the punishment depends on their not repenting.

The particle ثُمَّ (thumma) also conveys an interval of time: "then". The act, that is, was committed, and after it a period passed. In that period there was something that could have been done.

Sayings uttered about this verse are transmitted in the classical commentaries. A saying ascribed to al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī circulates in the exegetical sources: it is related that he read this verse and marvelled at the generosity of God's calling to repentance a community that had killed His friends. I do not present this ascription as a firm transmission; I record that such a saying circulates in the exegetical literature.

The principle the sentence establishes, however, is plain in the text and needs no transmitted report:

First: no crime shuts the door of repentance of itself. The Qurʾān says this in other places too: "O My servants who have gone to excess against themselves! Do not despair of God's mercy. Surely God forgives all sins" (al-Zumar 39/53).

Second: the punishment is fastened not to the act itself but to persistence in the act. The structure of the sentence shows this: fatanū (they did it) + thumma lam yatūbū (then they did not repent) → fa-lahum (for them there is…). The verdict comes after the second condition.

Third — and this is the hardest: this does not cancel the right of the one who was wronged. The verse is speaking of the wrongdoer's relation with God. The question of the rights owed to fellow human beings is a separate heading in the Qurʾānic and hadith tradition, and whether repentance covers such rights has been disputed. No legal ruling is issued in this commentary; I leave what the verse says within the bounds in which it is said.

Fourth: the sentence is an invitation as much as it is a verdict. The sūra came down in Mecca. Among its addressees there were people who were at that moment torturing Muslims. This verse reached their ears too. The sentence, that is, is not a part of a historical narrative; it is a door opened to the people standing there that day.

And history shows that this did not go unanswered: that some of the people who behaved most harshly towards the Muslims in Mecca later entered Islam is the common record of the biographical sources.

The verse counts two punishments: عَذَابُ جَهَنَّمَ and عَذَابُ ٱلْحَرِيقِ.

This is not repetition. The explanations the classical exegetes give:

The first view is the one most in keeping with the language of the sūra, and there is a reason for that:

حَرِيق — Root: ح-ر-ق. To burn. Ḥaraqa — he burned; iḥrāq — burning; ḥarīq — a fire, that which burns.

And in the fourth verse the work this community did was burning.

The sūra, that is, names the penalty with the word of the crime. This is the same move as the qutila of the fourth verse: to those who killed it was said "let them be killed"; to those who burned it is said "the punishment of the burning".

The principle the Qurʾān establishes here is that the kind of the penalty is chosen from the kind of the act. This is a widespread pattern in the Qurʾān and is called jazāʾan wifāqan (a fitting requital — al-Nabaʾ 78/26).

Inna'lladhīna āmanū wa ʿamilu'l-ṣāliḥāti lahum jannātun tajrī min taḥtihā'l-anhār; dhālika'l-fawzu'l-kabīr "For those who believe and do righteous deeds there are gardens beneath which rivers flow. That is the great triumph."

The tenth and eleventh verses correspond point for point:

The same pattern, the opposite direction. This is a structure the Qurʾān uses often in issuing verdicts, and it is another form of the fa-ammā … wa ammā pattern treated in the section on al-Qāriʿa.

There is something here that must be noticed, and the honesty of the sūra lies in it.

The eleventh verse promises the believers the garden. It does not promise deliverance in this world.

Nowhere across the sūra is it said "We brought them out of the fire" or "We destroyed the wrongdoers". In Sūrat al-Fīl the breaking up of the army is related; here there is no such sentence.

This is the hardest side of the sūra and it must not be softened. What the Qurʾān is saying here is: the one who is wronged is sometimes not delivered. There is a requital, but the place of the requital is not here.

The second verse of the sūra had already established this: "by the promised day." The ground of the reckoning is that day.

Root: ف-و-ز. To be delivered, to attain what one sought, to obtain what one wanted. Fāza — he won, he was delivered; mafāza — a place of deliverance; and, curiously, mafāza is also the word for a waterless, dangerous passage in the desert (a naming by its opposite, so that it may be counted auspicious).

At the centre of the word there is coming out of danger and reaching what is desired: not merely to win, but to win by being delivered.

In the Qurʾān fawz is generally mentioned with the adjectives "ʿaẓīm" (great, mighty) or "mubīn" (manifest). Its being qualified here with كَبِير (kabīr) is striking. I do not speak with certainty as to whether this adjective occurs with fawz only here in the Qurʾān; but I record that the collocation is out of the ordinary.

And the choice of the word fawz is meaningful in the context of the sūra for a further reason: inside the root there is the idea of being delivered. The sūra is speaking of people who were not delivered in this world, and it names what is given to them fawz — deliverance.

Inna baṭsha Rabbika la-shadīd "Surely the seizing of your Lord is severe."

Root: ب-ط-ش. And this word is hard to translate, because no single English word carries it.

Baṭsh: to grasp a thing violently and roughly, to fall upon it and seize it. The word describes the movement of the hand — the clawing, the snatching, the taking hold and not letting go.

The definition the lexicographers give: al-akhdh bi-shidda — to take with violence. Bāṭish — one who grasps hard.

The three elements the word carries:

1. Suddenness — not a slow encirclement but a lunge. 2. Roughness — not gentle. 3. Not letting go — after the grasp there is no getting free.

The most striking use of the root is the one for the wrongdoers:

وَإِذَا بَطَشْتُم بَطَشْتُمْ جَبَّارِينَ "And when you seize, you seize like tyrants." (al-Shuʿarāʾ 26/130)

Hūd says this sentence to his own people. Baṭsh, that is, occurs in the Qurʾān as the act of the wrongdoers too.

The other occurrences:

• "On that day We shall seize with the greatest seizing" (al-Dukhān 44/16).
• "We destroyed those stronger than them in seizing (ashadda minhum baṭshan)" (al-Zukhruf 43/8).
• "How were My seizing and My warnings!" (the context of al-Qamar 54/36).

Now set al-Shuʿarāʾ 26/130 and al-Burūj 85/12 side by side:

The same word, two sides. The community the sūra relates possessed baṭsh: it grasped people, it threw them into the trench. The verse uses the same word of God.

This is the continuation of the method we saw in the fourth and tenth verses of the sūra: the verdict is announced in the language of the crime. To those who killed, qutila; to those who burned, ḥarīq; to those who grasped, baṭsh.

This form of address was dwelt on in the section on Sūrat al-Fīl; the finding there was that the expression rabbuka concentrates in the early Meccan sūras at the places where the Prophet is being supported, and that it builds a sentence of assurance.

Here it has the same function, and is even more apt. The sūra is relating a tyranny, and facing that tyranny there is no worldly power at all. The sentence does not say "the seizing of God is severe"; it says "of your Lord".

That is, it speaks by way of a relationship belonging to the person addressed — to the Prophet, who at that moment was without power in Mecca.

There are two elements of reinforcement in the sentence: the إِنَّ at the head and the لَـ (lām al-muzaḥlaqa) at the head of the predicate.

In Arabic the coming of these two together raises the sentence to the highest degree of certainty, and it is generally used against an addressee who denies.

And this is the grammatical datum that supports the view that the sentence is the answer to the oaths of the third verse: answers to oaths come in exactly this form.

Innahū huwa yubdiʾu wa yuʿīd · Wa huwa'l-Ghafūru'l-Wadūd · Dhu'l-ʿarshi'l-Majīd · Faʿʿālun limā yurīd "Surely it is He who originates and repeats. He is the Forgiving, the Loving. Owner of the Throne, the Glorious. Doer of what He wills."

Four verses, six names and verbs one after another. The densest part of the sūra, and the arrangement is not accidental.

بَدَأَ — Root: ب-د-أ. To begin, to do for the first time. Badʾ — a beginning; badīʿ — one who makes something first, in a way never seen before.

عَادَ — Root: ع-و-د. To return, to repeat. Iʿāda — bringing back, repeating; ʿāda — a custom, the thing repeated; maʿād — the place to which one returns.

The two verbs together, in the Qurʾān, describe creation and resurrection:

"It is He who originates creation, then repeats it; and that is easier for Him." (al-Rūm 30/27)

Why is it important that these two verbs come here?

Because what the sūra is relating is people who were burned. Fire does away with a body; ash is what is left. And this is the objection deniers make most often against resurrection: how is what has been scattered to be gathered?

The verse does not answer this directly; it lays down a principle: the one who originates repeats. It cannot be said of one who can do a thing a first time that he cannot do it a second.

And this is the counterpart of the diagnosis in Sūrat al-Inshiqāq, "he supposed he would not return": the return is the work of the one who originates.

ٱلْغَفُور — Root: غ-ف-ر. The concrete sense of the root is to cover, to close over. Mighfar — the war-helmet that covers the head. Ghufrān — covering.

Forgiveness, that is, is in Arabic an act of covering: the offence is not annihilated, it is covered over. The faʿūl pattern conveys intensity: covering much and continually.

ٱلْوَدُود — Root: و-د-د. And this is the most surprising word of the sūra.

The sense of the root: to love. But between ḥubb (love) and wudd there is in Arabic a difference the lexicographers record: wudd is love in its outwardly expressed, behaviour-become state. Not merely an inclination felt within; a nearness that reaches the other side.

Its derivatives:

• وُدّ (wudd) — love, affection.
• مَوَدَّة (mawadda) — mutual love. The Qurʾān: "He put love and mercy between you" (al-Rūm 30/21).
• وَدُود — on the faʿūl pattern.

وَدُود occurs in two places in the Qurʾān:

"Surely my Lord is most merciful, most loving." (Hūd 11/90)

The one who says this is Shuʿayb — while warning his people.

"He is the Forgiving, the Loving." (al-Burūj 85/14)

Now one has to stop and think, because this arrangement is unexpected.

The sūra is relating a massacre. The twelfth verse said "the seizing of your Lord is severe". And two verses later: "He is the Forgiving, the Loving."

How does a work of exegesis join these two?

The first reading: the two names look to two sides. Ghafūr and Wadūd to the believers; shadīd al-baṭsh to the wrongdoers. The sūra had already separated the two groups in the tenth and eleventh verses.

The second reading: the two names look to the same side. The tenth verse had said "and then did not repent" — that is, the door of repentance stood open to the wrongdoers. The name Ghafūr is exactly the name of that door. And Wadūd says what the one who enters by the door will find: not only to be forgiven, but to be loved.

This second reading is more in keeping with the arrangement of the verses. For Ghafūr and Wadūd stand side by side in the same verse, and they are in the same section as the baṭsh of the twelfth verse. The sūra says three things one after another: His seizing is severe — He originates and repeats — He is forgiving, He is loving.

And there is this: Ghafūr speaks of pardon; but pardon contains a distance as well. The one pardoned knows he has been pardoned, and a debt stands between. Wadūd removes that distance.

I record this as my own reading; the standing of the two names side by side, however, is a datum of the text.

The faʿūl pattern can carry both an active and a passive sense in Arabic. Accordingly there are two readings:

Both have been defended in the classical sources. The majority prefer the first, and the context in Hūd 11/90 (Shuʿayb's address to his people, raḥīmun wadūd) supports it: there it is paired with raḥīm, and raḥīm is active.

I too prefer the first; it is not binding.

And this note as well: وَدّ (Wadd) is the name of an idol known in the pre-Islamic Arabian Peninsula, and it is mentioned in the Qurʾān (Nūḥ 71/23). The root of the word is the same. Whether this is a coincidence, or the trace within the language of an older notion of a "god of love" — on this I issue no firm ruling. That the two words are from the same root is a datum of the language.

ٱلْعَرْش — Root: ع-ر-ش. The concrete sense of the root: an arbour, a covered structure, a vine-trellis. ʿArsh is what is raised up and roofed over; from there it comes to mean "throne". The Qurʾān: "…gardens trellised and untrellised" (al-Anʿām 6/141).

The question of the Throne is among the most disputed headings in the history of kalām. That debate is not entered into in this commentary; I content myself with recording the root sense of the word.

Its function in the verse is plain from the context: the sūra had been speaking of a sovereignty. Those seated at the edge of the fire had a throne. The verse says to whom the real throne belongs.

And note: in the sixth verse the wrongdoers were sitting (quʿūd). In the fifteenth verse the owner of the Throne is mentioned. Two sittings, two scales.

I record this as my own reading.

Root: م-ج-د. The sense of the root: honour, loftiness, and abundance. The lexicographers describe majd as "the breadth and abundance of honour". Of a pasture's being abundant for a camel it is also said majudat; in the root there is breadth and plenty.

Majīd, that is, is not only "glorious"; it is one whose glory is broad and abundant.

Here there is a genuine variant reading:

Both readings are transmitted in the sources of the variant readings. I give no firm ascription as to which imām held which reading.

The difference in sense is real, but neither is contrary to the text: in the first the loftiness is given to the owner, in the second to the throne; and in the second case too the loftiness of the throne comes from its owner.

There is an indication within the sūra, and it is important: the word will occur once more in the twenty-first verse — قُرْءَانٌ مَّجِيدٌ. The sūra, that is, uses this attribute of two things: the Throne (or the owner of the Throne) and the Qurʾān.

This repetition must be kept in mind; it will do its work at the close of the sūra.

فَعَّال — the faʿʿāl pattern. In Arabic this pattern conveys frequency and continuity: one who does a thing much, who does it continually. Names of trades are on this pattern (najjār — carpenter, khayyāṭ — tailor).

The word, that is, does not mean "doer" but "one who keeps doing, who goes on doing".

لِمَا يُرِيدُ — "what He wills". إِرَادَة — Root: ر-و-د. The concrete sense of the root is curious: rāda — to go back and forth in search of a place, to survey. Rāʾid — the scout who looks for pasture and water for the tribe. From here irāda: turning towards a thing, wanting it.

What the sentence does in the sūra. This is the close of the four-verse series of names, and it serves as a seal.

The things counted through the sūra — the severe seizing, the originating and repeating, the forgiving, the loving — are all acts. The last verse says that all those acts are bound to a single source: He does what He wills.

And this sentence has a sharp side in the context of the sūra too. Those seated at the edge of the fire supposed that they were doing what they willed — this is the most defining attribute of a sovereign. The verse takes that attribute from his hand and gives it to its real owner.

Read in order the names counted in the four verses:

1. Severe in seizing (12) — power. 2. Originating and repeating (13) — creation. 3. Ghafūr (14) — forgiveness. 4. Wadūd (14) — love. 5. Owner of the Throne / Majīd (15) — sovereignty. 6. Doer of what He wills (16) — will.

The arrangement begins hard and softens, then hardens again: baṭsh → ghafūr, wadūd → faʿʿālun limā yurīd.

This is an arrangement in keeping with the main question of the sūra: the sūra is relating a tyranny, and against that tyranny it opens both a reckoning and a door. The names too carry those two things at once.

Hal atāka ḥadīthu'l-junūd · Firʿawna wa Thamūd "Has the tidings of the armies come to you? Of Pharaoh and Thamūd."

This form is used in the Qurʾān in opening a narrative, and it is striking: hal atāka ḥadīthu Mūsā (Ṭāhā 20/9; al-Nāziʿāt 79/15), hal atāka ḥadīthu'l-ghāshiya (al-Ghāshiya 88/1), hal atāka ḥadīthu ḍayfi Ibrāhīm (al-Dhāriyāt 51/24).

In the section on Sūrat al-Fīl the form "a lam tara" (have you not seen) was treated, and this was recorded: the formula is used to say "look at this thing everyone knows"; the source of the knowledge is not the eye but widespread report.

هَلْ أَتَىٰكَ is a little different. The verb atā is "to come"; the tidings, that is, are something that has reached the addressee. The question probes not the existence of the knowledge but whether it has been dwelt upon.

Its English equivalent: "You have heard about that, haven't you?"

Root: ح-د-ث. To be new, to come to pass. Ḥādith — that which comes to be afterwards; ḥudūth — coming into being; ḥadīth — both "new" and "a saying that is told".

The idea of "newness" in the root is noteworthy: when an event is told, it happens again. Tidings are what make the event fresh.

Root: ج-ن-د. Jund — an army, a gathered crowd; its plural is junūd. The explanation the lexicographers transmit: the origin of the word is "hard, thick ground"; from there it passed into the sense of "a gathered, compacted mass".

The choice of the word is meaningful. The verse does not say "peoples" or "nations"; it says "armies".

What is mentioned, that is, is the dimension of power of those communities. Pharaoh was a state, Thamūd a people; but here both are mentioned as "military force".

And this connects directly with the context of the sūra: those seated at the edge of the fire had an army too. To dig a trench, to gather people, to feed a fire — these require organised force.

Why these two?

When the Qurʾān speaks of communities that were destroyed it can give long lists: the people of Noah, ʿĀd, Thamūd, the people of Lot (Lūṭ), Madyan, the companions of al-Rass, Tubbaʿ. Here only two names are mentioned.

The logic of the selection is worth dwelling on:

The two examples, that is, are chosen from two different scales: one the greatest state, the other a people from the addressee's own country.

This is another form of the method recorded in the section on Sūrat al-Fīl: the Qurʾān brings its proof both from far off and from near at hand.

On Thamūd a detailed examination was made in this commentary in the section on Sūrat al-Shams: what the Qurʾān gives, the records in the external sources (the Assyrian records, the Greek and Latin geographers, the "Thamūdic" inscriptions) and the caution that the rock-cut structures in the region of al-Ḥijr belong to the Nabataean period were given there; I do not repeat them. I content myself with recalling the basic finding there: Thamūd was not a distant and legendary name for the addressees of the Qurʾān; the Syrian caravan road passed through that region.

In the section on al-Shams it was also recorded that Thamūd's denial came after its transgression (kadhdhabat Thamūdu bi-ṭaghwāhā): first the bound was crossed, then the word that recalled the bound was counted a lie. The nineteenth verse of Sūrat al-Burūj will repeat the same order.

A small detail: the word Thamūd here takes no tanwīn (not wa Thamūda, not wa Thamūdin). This shows that the word is being used as a diptote (ghayr munṣarif) — that is, it has been taken as the name of a tribe and counted feminine and a proper name.

In the Qurʾān the word comes sometimes with tanwīn and sometimes as a diptote; this is explained by whether the word is counted the name of a tribe or the name of an ancestor. It does not change the sense.

And here one has to be honest.

Pharaoh and Thamūd are two communities of whom the Qurʾān says openly that they were destroyed in this world. Pharaoh was drowned in the sea, Thamūd was wiped out by a convulsion.

For the companions of the trench the sūra says nothing of the kind.

Why, then, are these two examples mentioned?

Two readings are possible:

The second reading is more in keeping with the context, and the tense of the nineteenth verse supports it. But the sūra does not say this openly; neither reading is contrary to the text.

Bali'lladhīna kafarū fī takdhīb · Wa'llāhu min warāʾihim muḥīṭ "Rather, those who disbelieve are in a state of denial. And God encircles them from behind."

The seventeenth verse had asked a question: "Has the tidings of the armies come to you?" The nineteenth verse begins with بَلْ.

This is an unexpected transition. Bal conveys leaving the preceding sentence and moving to something else (iḍrāb).

What it does is this: the question was asked, the answer was not waited for. It is as though the addressee said "yes, it has come", and the verse goes on: "then the matter is not a lack of knowledge."

That is, the tidings have arrived; but their arriving has changed nothing.

The real point of the word order is here.

The verse does not say "they deny" (yukadhdhibūn). It says "they are in a denial": fī takdhīb.

The particle فِى conveys containment: a vessel, a taking inside, an enclosing. It has been treated several times in this commentary — fī kabadin (al-Balad), fī khusrin (al-ʿAṣr), fī taḍlīl (al-Fīl).

In the section on Sūrat al-Fīl this was recorded of the structure: "the plot has been placed inside the state of coming to nothing; no blow has fallen on it from outside, it has fallen into a condition that surrounded it from beginning to end."

The same logic works here: denial is not an act but an element. A person does not deny from time to time; he stands inside the denial.

And the word is indefinite (with tanwīn): takdhībin — "a denial". The indefiniteness conveys magnification here: a denial hard to describe, whose bounds are not drawn.

تَكْذِيب is a verbal noun on the tafʿīl pattern. As was recorded in the section on al-Shams, this pattern conveys "declaring what another has said to be a lie" — not lying oneself.

مُحِيط — Root: ح-و-ط. The concrete sense of the root: to surround a thing, to build a wall around it. Ḥāʾiṭ — a wall; iḥāṭa — encircling; ḥiyāṭa — a surround.

Muḥīṭ, that is, is one who wraps a thing completely round, leaving no side of it open.

مِن وَرَآئِهِم — "from behind them"

This expression is worth dwelling on. The verse does not say "He has encircled them"; it says "He has encircled them from behind."

Warāʾ — behind, the rear; the side a person cannot see.

The explanation of the classical exegetes: the encircling is coming from the direction they least expect and cannot see. A person guards his front; he cannot guard his back.

And here there is a bond between two sūras.

In Sūrat al-Inshiqāq this occurred:

وَأَمَّا مَنْ أُوتِىَ كِتَٰبَهُۥ وَرَآءَ ظَهْرِهِۦ — "But as for the one whose record is given him from behind his back…" (al-Inshiqāq 84/10)

The same word: وَرَاء.

In both sūras the side a person cannot see is the side from which the verdict comes. In the one the record is given from behind, in the other the encircling comes from behind.

I record this as my own reading; the shared word, however, is a datum of the text.

One more observation: at the beginning of the sūra the wrongdoers were sitting around the fire. They had encircled a pit.

In the twentieth verse the encircling side changes: God has encircled them.

The encirclers were encircled. This is a second performance, with another word, of the "the watchers were watched" move of the ninth verse.

I offer this as my own reading; but that the sūra repeats this method of reversal in three separate words (qutila, ḥarīq, muḥīṭ) is a datum of the text.

Bal huwa Qurʾānun majīd · Fī lawḥin maḥfūẓ "Rather, it is a glorious Qurʾān; on a preserved tablet."

The close of the sūra. And the close binds everything the sūra has related to a contrast.

The nineteenth verse had begun with bal: "rather, they are in denial." The twenty-first verse again begins with bal: "rather, it is a glorious Qurʾān."

The two bals complete one another:

• The first corrects the situation of the addressee: the matter is not knowledge but attitude.
• The second corrects the standing of the text: whatever is denied, it stands where it is.

In its last two verses, that is, the sūra turns the subject from people to the text.

There is a pronoun in the verse whose referent is not stated openly: huwa — "it".

The explanation of the exegetes: the pronoun refers to the Qurʾān. This is understood from the word takdhīb (denial) in the nineteenth verse — what is denied is the Qurʾān. The pronoun, that is, refers to a referent that is unstated but known from the context.

This is a widespread usage in the Qurʾān, and it is the same structure as "We sent it down…" (innā anzalnāhu) in the first verse of Sūrat al-Qadr; it was treated in the section on al-Qadr.

قُرْءَان — Root: ق-ر-أ. This root was treated in the section on Sūrat al-ʿAlaq; I do not repeat it here.

مَّجِيد — the second coming of the word that occurred in the fifteenth verse.

And this repetition is one of the finest moves of the sūra.

In the fifteenth verse majīd was the attribute either of the Throne or of the owner of the Throne (according to the variant reading). In the twenty-first verse it is the attribute of the Qurʾān.

The sūra, that is, gives the same attribute to two things: to the Throne and to the text.

Recall the sense in the root of the word: majd is the breadth and abundance of honour. A majīd text, that is, is a text both lofty and inexhaustible.

I record this as an observation; that the word occurs in two verses is a datum of the text, and the bond between them is my own reading.

Root: ل-و-ح. The semantic field of the root runs in two directions, and both are interesting:

1. A flat, level tablet; a board. Lawḥ — a flat surface written upon.

The Qurʾān uses this sense in two places:

"We wrote for him on the tablets an admonition concerning everything…" (al-Aʿrāf 7/145) — the tablets given to Moses. Also al-Aʿrāf 7/150 and 154.

"We carried him upon a thing of planks and nails." (al-Qamar 54/13) — Noah's ship.

al-Qamar 54/13 is noteworthy: the same word is used for the planks of the ship. Lawḥ, that is, is not a sacred term; it is the name of a material. A flat, level piece.

2. To shine, to appear. Lāḥa — it shone, it appeared. The Qurʾān: "Scorching to the skin (lawwāḥatun li'l-bashar)" (al-Muddaththir 74/29) — in this verse the word conveys a burning or altering, and it is explained differently by the exegetes.

The relation between the two branches of the root has been disputed by the lexicographers; I issue no firm ruling. The sense in the verse is beyond dispute the first.

The word لَوْح occurs in this sense in the Qurʾān only here, and in the singular. Its other occurrences are plural (alwāḥ).

Root: ح-ف-ظ. To protect, to watch over, to keep; and also to memorise (to keep a thing in the mind).

مَحْفُوظ is a passive participle: that which is protected, that which has been preserved. Passive — not preserving itself, but being preserved.

A note on variant readings. There is a genuine difference in the reading of this word:

Both readings are transmitted in the sources of the variant readings. I give no firm ascription as to which imām held which reading.

The difference in sense is fine but real: in the first the preserving is ascribed to the vessel, in the second to the content. Neither is contrary to the text, and in practice they come to the same result.

This construct has given rise to a long tradition of debate in the literature of kalām and of Sufism: what the tablet is, where it is, what is written in it, what its relation to destiny is.

That debate is not entered into in this commentary. The Qurʾān uses this construct once and does not describe it. To describe what is not described is not the business of this text.

There are expressions within the Qurʾān that may be related to it — kitābin maknūn (al-Wāqiʿa 56/78), umm al-kitāb (al-Zukhruf 43/4; al-Raʿd 13/39), kitābin ḥafīẓ (Qāf 50/4) — but whether these expressions are the same as one another is itself disputed, and no ruling is issued here.

The function of the verse within the sūra, however, is beyond dispute, and that is the real matter.

Now recall the sūra from beginning to end.

The sūra related a fire. The work of fire is to destroy: it burns, it reduces to ash, it leaves nothing behind. And into that fire people were thrown — for believing.

There is one other thing fire can burn, and it has very often been burned in history: writing.

In its last verse the sūra sets a preserved tablet against that fire.

Let us put the contrast into a table:

The sūra does not establish this contrast openly. It sets the two images at the two ends of the sūra and leaves them there. The reader makes the connection.

But this has to be recorded: the close of the sūra stands like an answer given to the method to which tyranny has resorted most through history. The most common way of doing away with a belief is to destroy its bearers and its texts. People are burned, books are burned, the record is erased.

What the sūra says is this: fire can burn a human being; it cannot burn the text — because the original of the text is not here.

I offer this as my own reading. The structure of the sūra (its opening with fire and closing with a preserved tablet), however, is a datum of the text and is too marked to be counted a coincidence.

There is one thing more, and it takes on meaning when one thinks of the first addressees of the sūra.

This sūra came down in Mecca. At that time the Qurʾān had no written muṣḥaf; the verses were being memorised and written on scattered materials. The Muslims were few in number, unprotected and under pressure.

The sūra, that is, says "it is preserved" about a text that was in fact unprotected.

And it says this at the end of a sūra that has related how people could not be protected. The people were not protected; the text was. The sūra does not shrink from putting these two sentences one after the other.

The most marked technique of the sūra is to use a single root more than once, in different forms:

The sūra names the penalty in the language of the crime. This is a method repeated three times across the sūra:

The sūra changes scale continually, and every change carries a verdict:

• The sky (1) → the trench (4): from above to below.
• The spectators of a pit (7) → the one who is witness to all things (9): from narrow witnessing to complete witnessing.
• A local sovereignty → the dominion of the heavens and the earth (9): from small power to great dominion.
• An affair of one trench (4-7) → Pharaoh and Thamūd (18): from a single event to history.
• Burned pages → a preserved tablet (22): from a text destroyed to a text preserved.

All the verse-endings of the sūra close on a single sound: -ūd / -īd.

burūj, mawʿūd, mashhūd, ukhdūd, waqūd, quʿūd, shuhūd, ḥamīd, shahīd, ḥarīq(), kabīr(), shadīd, yuʿīd, wadūd, majīd, yurīd, junūd, Thamūd, takdhīb(), muḥīṭ(), majīd, maḥfūẓ.

The great majority of the twenty-two verses close with a long vowel + d. The few verses I have marked with an asterisk (10, 11, 19, 20) fall out of the series because they are longer; and these are the two verses of verdict in the sūra (10-11) and the verses that prepare the close (19-20).

That is: the sound marks the structure of the sūra as well — the short, monotonously rhymed verses carry the narrative and the sections of names; the long verses that fall out of the rhyme carry the verdicts.

I record this as an observation.

First: that spectatorship is not a position.

What the sixth and seventh verses establish is the side of the sūra that looks most directly at the present.

The sūra records not those who lit the fire but those who sat at the edge of it. And the word it uses is not "spectator" but "witness" — that is, in the legal sense the one who attests the event, and therefore ratifies it.

What this amounts to today needs little explaining. In a world where the image of oppression reaches everywhere, watching is an actual position. The distinction the sūra makes is this: the difference between seeing and bearing witness is what is done with what is seen. Bearing witness produces a responsibility; spectatorship is a position constructed in order not to produce it.

And the Qurʾān does not recognise a category called spectatorship. The pronoun "they" in the seventh verse gathers those who sat and those who acted into a single subject.

Second: that what the crime was is said in a single sentence.

The eighth verse finishes off the ground of the tyranny in one sentence: "only because they believed."

The side of this that looks to the present is the matter of the inflation of grounds. Tyranny generally has a list of grounds: security, order, threat, historical right. What the verse does is to lift that list away and show what is left underneath it.

This is exactly what the pattern of restriction (mā … illā) does in this verse: it makes the ground small. And as the ground shrinks the act grows.

This can be used as a method today as well: when the list of grounds for a practice is lifted away, what is left?

Third: the door of repentance being left open.

The clause "and then did not repent" in the tenth verse is the hardest and the most important sentence of the sūra.

Its bearing on the present has two sides, and both are hard.

Seen from the side of the wrongdoer: no past turns a human being into a closed file. This is a morally uncomfortable sentence, and the discomfort has to be recorded. But this is the Qurʾān's own logic, and it is consistent: if repentance closes after a certain point, then after that point no reason is left for a person to change.

Seen from the side of the one wronged: this sentence is not an order to forgive. The verse does not say "forgive" to the one wronged; it speaks of the door between the wrongdoer and God. The question of the rights owed to fellow human beings is separate, and this verse does not regulate it.

The distinction is this, and it must not be lost: the door of repentance being open does not mean that what was done grows lighter. The same verse counts two punishments for those who do not repent.

Fourth: the name "the Loving" occurring where tyranny is related.

The name Wadūd in the fourteenth verse is the most striking arrangement in the sūra, and it says something.

The occurrence of the name "most loving" in the middle of a narrative of tyranny stands like a note entered against two things:

First: the relating of tyranny leads the one who relates it to harden as well. Texts that relate an injustice slide, most of the time, into the language of anger, and cannot get out of that language. The sūra does not do this: two verses after its harshest sentence (baṭsh) it utters its gentlest name.

Second: for a person who has been wronged, it is easy for a picture to be built up in which oppression stands at the centre of the world. The sūra cuts this off too. The event related is appalling; but at the centre of the frame within which the event is related stand Ghafūr and Wadūd.

Fifth: that no promise of deliverance is given.

This is the most honest side of the sūra, and it must not be softened.

The sūra does not say that the believers were delivered in this world. It does not say that the wrongdoers were punished in this world. It only changes the place of the reckoning.

The side of this that looks to the present is the question of whether a belief promises its adherents worldly success. Sūrat al-Burūj does not give that promise. What it gives is that the measure of the outcome is not the worldly outcome.

This is not an easy consolation. But neither is it a false one — and the worth of the sūra lies here.

Sixth: that a text outlives a human being.

The contrast the last two verses establish says something concrete from the point of view of cultural memory.

To do away with a community has been attempted many times in history and has sometimes succeeded. But to do away with a text is far harder — because a text can be multiplied, memorised, passed from one vessel into another.

The sūra says this in a theological language: the original of the text is on a preserved tablet. But what it says has an observable side as well, and this becomes still more meaningful if the identification with Najrān is correct: the state that carried out that massacre disappeared within a few years; the memory of the massacre stayed inside a text, and is still read today.

I record this as an observation; I do not claim that the Qurʾān intends it.

• That "the companions of the trench" is the Najrān event is an inference of the classical exegetes; the Qurʾān does not establish that link. This distinction was stated openly within the text, and the other identifications were given in a table.
• On the year of the Najrān event no definite date was given; because the sources and modern research differ, it was only said that "there is a concentration on the first half of the 520s".
• On which detail the inscriptions record, care was taken: the record of the killing and the burning of churches was separated from the description of "fire in a trench"; it was stated that the second comes essentially from the narrative sources.
• That Dhū Nuwās and the Yūsuf Asʾar Yathʾar of the inscriptions are the same person was conveyed as the acceptance of the majority of researchers; no firm ruling was issued. The catalogue numbers of the inscriptions were not given, because I cannot give them with certainty.
• The names of the Syriac and Greek sources were not given one by one; they were mentioned by kind, because I cannot give the names and dates of particular texts with certainty.
• That the "king and boy" report in Muslim specifies neither place nor time was recorded; the details of the report were not conveyed.
• On who the shāhid and the mashhūd of verse 3 are, eight views were given in a table; no preference was imposed.
• On where the answer to the oath lies, three views were given; the third was found strong but was not counted binding.
• On what the burūj of verse 1 is, four views were given; it was stated that the two senses do not exclude one another.
• On whether the aṣḥāb al-ukhdūd of verse 4 are the wrongdoers or the wronged, two views were given; a preference was stated with its ground, and it was written that it is not binding.
• In the variant reading waqūd / wuqūd at verse 5, which imām held which reading was not given.
• In the variant readings at verses 15 and 22 (al-majīdu / al-majīdi and maḥfūẓun / maḥfūẓin) which imām held which reading was not given, because I am not sure. The consequences for the sense of the two readings were treated.
• On whether the construct al-fawzu'l-kabīr at verse 11 is the only occurrence in the Qurʾān, no certainty was claimed.
• The saying ascribed to al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī was not presented as a firm transmission; it was recorded that it circulates in the exegetical literature.
• On whether the Wadūd of verse 14 is active or passive, two readings were given; a preference was stated and it was written that it is not binding.
• On the relation between the root و-د-د and the pre-Islamic idol Wadd, no ruling was issued; only the unity of the root was recorded.
• On whether the two branches of sense in the root ل-و-ح (tablet / to shine) are historically one root, no ruling was issued.
• The question of the lawḥ maḥfūẓ was not entered into as a matter of kalām; what the Qurʾān does not describe was not described. On whether it is the same as the other Qurʾānic expressions (umm al-kitāb, kitābin maknūn), no ruling was issued.
• The question of the Throne was not entered into as a matter of kalām; it was enough to give the root sense of the word.
• The relation between repentance and the rights owed to fellow human beings, being a legal heading, was not settled by a ruling.
• The observations on structure, scale and sound within the sūra (the three turns of witnessing, the fire–tablet contrast, the principle of requital, the series of verse-endings) were offered as my own reading; the repetitions of word and root, however, are countable data of the text.
• On who is addressed by the examples of Pharaoh and Thamūd at verses 17-18 (the companions of the trench, or the Meccans), two readings were given; the second was found more in keeping with the context but was not settled.